Regarding Zizek: "Cyberspace, Or, The Unbearable Closure of Being" from chapter 4 of _The Plague of Fantasies_and his analysis of MIT's SixthSense in _Living in the End Times_ might be of interest to you, Carmel. Best, Nathan On Feb 26, 2012, at 3:46 PM, Carmel Vaisman wrote:

Dear all,

I would appreciate your help in finding papers and books that employ philosophical concepts to explain the impact of current technology or even predict human change based on social media and digital culture. For example, Slavoy Zizek's latest writing, Roger Silverstone's writing on "proper distance", Bauman's writing on presence and mobile telephony and even Turkle's latest book. Anything similar goes.

Thank you,

Carmel L. Vaisman, PhD. Visiting Scholar at Indiana University Mobile: (812) 360-4212 http://www.absolutecarmel.com @carmelva _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

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Nathan A. Franklin Assistant Professor, Composition General Education Coordinator Clinton Community College 136 Clinton Point Drive Plattsburgh, New York 12901 (518) 562-4404 www.clinton.edu

Dear Carmel and Co.

I would appreciate your help in finding papers and books that employ philosophical concepts to explain the impact of current technology or even predict human change based on social media and digital culture. For example, Slavoy Zizek's latest writing, Roger Silverstone's writing on "proper distance", Bauman's writing on presence and mobile telephony and even Turkle's latest book. Anything similar goes.

What a delightful question! CRITICAL THEORIES One of the most active (and, from my perspective, most fruitful and interesting) groups of scholars conjoining philosophy with media studies cluster around two specific forms of critical theory approaches - namely, 1) Andrew Feenberg's critical theory of technology, especially as developed extensively in conjunction with empirical work on CMC by Maria Bakardjieva - e.g., her forthcoming "Web 2.0 Technologies of the Self," co-authored with Georgia Gaden. ("Online first" - DOI: 10.1007/s13347-011-0032-9) 2) the Marxian (if not more Marxist) inspired work of Christian Fuchs and many other colleagues - some of which will be highlighted in the upcoming conference "Critique, Democracy and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society," Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, May 2-4, 2012. Christian has published - and continues to publish - extensively in these domains, and may be willing to share some of his forthcoming work that provides a terrific overview of critical approaches. VIRTUE ETHICS More broadly, there has been a very strong growth of research and reflection rooted in virtue ethics approaches to online engagements, including social media. In my view, two of the very best are: Vallor, S. (2009). Social Networking Technology and the Virtues. Ethics and Information Technology. Volume 12, Number 2 <http://www.springerlink.com/content/1388-1957/12/2/>, 157-170, DOI: 10.1007/s10676-009-9202-1 Vallor, S. 2011. Flourishing on facebook: virtue friendship & new social media. Ethics and Information Technology. Doi: 10.1007/s10676-010-9262-2. There is also a more popularly oriented anthology: Facebook and Philosophy: What¹s On Your Mind?, ? D.E. Wittkower (ed.). Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Press, 2010. Several of the contributions take up various sorts of virtue ethics approaches; others expand the field to a wide range of other philosophical perspectives. I have a review of the book coming out soon in _Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology_ that I'd be happy to share, as it provides both an overview of the contributions (which, sadly, the book itself does not) as well as my critical take on which contributions most fruitfully succeed in conjoining various philosophical dimensions with online engagements. Finally, a not-to-be-missed resource here is the work of our very own Elizabeth Buchanan and Annette Markham on the "Ethical Guidelines 2.0" document for AoIR. (A version of the document has been posted for comment by AoIRist - but if you have trouble finding it, please contact either Elizabeth and/or Annette.) (WARNING: SELF-CITATION AT WORK...) Closer to my own work - though not directly addressed at the broader notions of digital culture characteristic of the above - some of the following might be useful. Ess, C. and Thorseth, M. 2011. Introduction, in C. Ess and M. Thorseth (eds.), _Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives_, pp. vii-xxiv. New York: Peter Lang. [here we summarize an emerging philosophical anthropology that conjoins especially phenomenology, Kantian epistemology and ethics, and virtue ethics - and in ways that are deeply shaped by the empirical findings of Internet Studies more broadly. All for the sake of having a starting-point account of human beings as embodied and ethical agents, in order to better understand our interactions with diverse technologies, including CMC.] (happy to share a PDF) Some of this work is also in play in: Ess, C. And Cheong, P. 2012. Introduction: Religion 2.0? Relational and Hybridizing Pathways in Religion, Social Media, and Culture.  In P. Cheong, P. Fischer-Nielsen, S. Gelfgren, and C. Ess (eds.), _Digital Religion, Social Media and Culture: Perspectives, Practices and Futures_, pp. 1-21. New York: Peter Lang. (happy to share a PDF) [I'm also currently finishing up a more philosophically-focused essay on "Ethics at the Boundaries of the Virtual" for a handbook on virtuality - but this is more of a exploration of virtue ethics vis-a-vis diverse forms of virtual environments, including two recent applications of VE to virtual experiences, with a view towards highlighting how VE can help us come to grips with specific ethical problems evoked in such environments that escape otherwise prevailing ethical frameworks. Probably too far afield for your purposes.] My main focus over the past three years has been on how our understandings of selfhood and identity interact with media use, using Medium Theory as a primary framework while simultaneously oriented toward the relevant philosophical insights and frameworks. I've just submitted the introduction to a forthcoming issue of Philosophy and Technology on "Personal Identity Online" (which includes the Bakardjieva and Gaden article I refer to above) in which I both summarize the various contributions to the special issue and sketch the larger patterns they suggest. Most of the contributions are rooted in specific philosophical theories regarding identity and seek to explore how far these theories are consistent with and/or require revision in light of current empirical findings concerning our behaviors online, including social media uses. A couple, however, go the other way, so to speak, and begin with strong empirical analyses of specific phenomena - e.g., Stine Lomborg's "Negotiating Privacy Through Phatic Communication. A Case Study of the Blogging Self." What I highlight about Stine's contribution is its careful description of the negotiating processes between a popular blog author and her audience, as these result in a sense of shared communicative space that is clearly neither private nor (experientially) public, but rather personal in a shared sense somewhat captured by the Danish (and other Germanic languages') word that transliterates as "Intimate sphere". In contrast to earlier understandings of privacy as primarily individual privacy strongly separated from various forms of public engagements - this middle-ground sense helps move forward our reflections on the ethical dimensions of privacy issues online, for example. (happy to share a PDF of the introduction) I'm sure I've missed some important books, articles, and philosophers - but again, hope this is helpful in some way or another. Cheers and all best, - charles Professor MSO Media Studies Aarhus University Helsingforsgade 14 8200 Århus N. Denmark Professor, Philosophy and Religion Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23